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Microsoft Gadget Keeps Record of Your Life

Posted by michael on from the unexamined-life-not-worth-living-etc.-etc. dept.

An anonymous reader writes "SenseCam, touted as a visual diary of sorts by Microsoft Corp., is designed to be worn around the neck and take up to 2,000 images a 12-hour day automatically. The prototype responds to changes such as bright lights and sudden movements and might one day even respond to other stimuli such as heart rate or skin temperature -- to track medical problems as easily as to record a Hawaiian vacation."

6 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. Strange days by panxerox · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Strange days" anyone? Can users sell thier "Record of Your Life recordings"? Can "Record of Your Life recordings" be held against you in a court of law?

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    "It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
    1. Re:Strange days by Short+Circuit · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Orson Scott Card talked about something similar in The Worthing Saga. Instead of two-hour movies, people would watch a continuous section of a person't life. Except the recording device captured the whole area, and was strapped to the star's leg.

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      tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
  2. oh good by andih8u · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The millions of blogs out there didn't clog searches up nearly enough, now maybe we can fill google image search with the hundreds of thousands of pictures that will now go along with the description of "got up this morning, had breakfast, went out of the front door..."

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    slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
  3. Based on old device by Videolife by andy666 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A company called Videolife has a more primitive, but essentially the same thing, in the early 90s.

  4. Been there, done that by knarf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In 2001 I paddled the Yukon from Whitehorse (Canada) to Emmonak (Alaska, at the mouth of the river) in a 17 ft. canoe. To document the experience without too much hassle, I built a solar-powered waterproof computer out of a Virgin WebPlayer (remember those?) and some assorted electronic parts. The machine was/is equipped with a VGA webcam, which took pictures with regular intervals or when ordered to do so (whichever came first). It could also do motion tracking, snapping shots of passing animals etc. It could also record sound if needed. All of that was stored on two 20 GB notebook harddrives inside the machine. I mentioned the project on /. in this posting.

    Had I still had my webserver (...no broadband where I now live, in Sweden...) those pictures would be visible for all to see. The camera was attached with a velcro strip to my hat, or sometimes to the canoe. It contains a microphone as well, so it could also record sounds (a function I did not use at the time). The whole setup worked fine, right until a leak in the camera's waterproofing and a subsequent rainy week smudged the CCD sensor. Pictures were blurry after that...

    Of course I'm not the only one who has done things like this. There is a lot of 'prior art' in this field.

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    --frank[at]unternet.org
  5. Needs lots and lots of meta-data by mw2040 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I didn't see any reference to this in the first article (and as a good slashdotter, I haven't looked at the second, Microsoft one yet), but clearly to "zip through" 1000s of pictures, you need to store tons of meta-data for each one. GPS-like location for outdoors, trianglation based on 802.11 access points for indoors???, maybe you could enable yours to transfer a digital business card to other people's sense-cam at the push of a button, so another part of the meta-data would be who you were talking to.
    Upload not only pictures but also meta-data to your PC at night and have software that generates a log of what you did that day. The privacy issues are a little scary, but (like video cameras today) you could just disallow them in buildings/situations you don't want to be photographed. Technology is just a tool... its how you use it... blah blah blah...